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Harsha Subramaniam
Sankar Radhakrishnan

CHENNAI, March 28

IMAGINE if you had to be accountable for every minute you spend at the office, spelling out in 15-minute blocks what work you have actually put in during the day.

That's what advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather's (O&M) time-sheet system has done; made its employees accountable for the time spent on the accounts and brands they handle.

According to this system, every employee has to fill in a time sheet to account for the time he spends on every brand that he handles. The client, therefore, gets to know how much time is spent on his brand and this brings in accountability for the fee that he is charged. This system, which was started in Singapore a couple of years ago, has been introduced in India recently.

Before the end of every working day (or at the beginning of the next), each employee has to fill in a computerised online sheet, to record the time he has spent on each brand that he handles and specify the tasks he has done. This is split into productive and non-productive time.

For instance, a one-hour travel to your client's factory is considered non-productive time, while time spent on preparing a presentation is counted as productive time. All revenue-generating employees are expected to be accountable for eight hours every day.

At the end of the month, the cumulative time spent on a brand is calculated. This becomes a quantitative measure of how much time the agency has spent for its client. If an employee consistently fails to fill in the time-sheet (despite prior warning and a grace period), his e-mail account is locked out. The idea being that once the e.mail is locked, given the high dependence on this function, employees are going to be doubly sure to fill up the online time sheet.

Apart from justifying the fees that the agency's charges a client, it also helps it allocate its resources adroitly.

Mr Ranjan Kapur, Managing Director, India & Chairman South Asia, Ogilvy & Mather told Business Line in an exclusive interview that as more clients agree on a fee-based system, the agency needs to be careful about managing its time and resources.

"In a commission-based system you really had no idea how productive people could be. By using these time sheets, I know how profitable each account is. And whether I'm putting my resources in the right place and is the account run efficiently?" he says.

This system has been introduced for all revenue-generating employee across all functions. "For the support staff it doesn't matter, because I know what proportion of their time is spent in running the business," says Mr Kapur.

Though there was resentment among the employees when the system was introduced, many believe that it has helped them manage their time. "At the end of the month, I can find out how much time I spend on every task. This can help in better time management," says an agency official.

He believes this time-based system, which is similar to consulting or law firms, will make advertising agencies more professional.

Ms Mahnaz Curmally, President, South Asia, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide says, "Public Relations as a discipline has always worked on the system of timesheets, and elaborate ones at that, so it is heartening that other streams of communication are following our lead."

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